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The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has come out with its first Green Status assessment for the lion (Panthera leo). And the news is not good.
The species has been ranked as ‘Largely Depleted’ by the world body in a statement released on March 27, 2025.
“The first Green Status assessment for the lion (Panthera leo) shows that it is Largely Depleted, while the species remains Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. Today’s Green Status assessment shows that human impacts are preventing the lion from being fully ecologically functional across its range, as the species declines across large areas and is extinct from North Africa and Southwest Asia,” noted the statement.
It added: “However, the assessment also shows that conservation has prevented likely extinctions from West and Southern Central Africa, South Africa and India. Intensified efforts are needed to maintain the existing population as human settlements across its range continue to grow.”
It was in a paper in the journal Conservation Biology in July 2021 that the IUCN first introduced the ‘Green Status’, which was intended to tell a ‘species’ full conservation story’.
The new assessment tool is divided into nine recovery categories: Fully recovered, slightly depleted, moderately depleted, largely depleted, critically depleted, extinct in the wild, and indeterminate.
“There are now over 100 IUCN Green Status of Species assessments on the IUCN Red List. The Green Status complements the IUCN Red List by providing a tool for assessing the recovery of species and measuring their conservation success,” the March 27 IUCN statement observed.
Lions were previously described as two subspecies: the African Lion (Panthera leo leo) and the Asiatic Lion (Panthera leo persica). However, this has subsequently changed.
The IUCN SSC Cat Specialist Group currently divides lions into Panthera leo leo (found in Central Africa, West Africa and Asia) and Panthera leo melanochaita (found in Southern and East Africa).
“A population of ~23,000 adult and subadult lions in Africa (African Lion Database, unpub. data 2023) and ~670 adult and subadult lions in India (Gujarat Forest Department 2020) was estimated for this assessment,” the 2023 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species for the lion noted.